"Deep Time" Solo Art Show by Rohini Devasher at KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension > 11am-7pm on 4th to 13th October 2013
Time : 11:00 am - 7:00 pm (Saturdays closed)
Entry : Free
Event Description : Khoj International Artists’ Association presents 'Deep Time' a solo show by Delhi-based artist Rohini Devasher.
Deep Time is part of an ongoing project that looks to map common points between astronomy and art practice, through the lens of metaphor.
Rohini Devasher was born in 1978 and lives and works in New Delhi. She received her MA in Printmaking from Winchester School of Art in the UK and her BFA from the College of Art in New Delhi. Her work has been exhibited widely in India and abroad. Two years ago, she began a project that looked at unraveling the hidden world of amateur astronomers in Delhi. Beginning as a form of collective investigation with ‘astro-nomads’ or amateur astronomers in Delhi, stories, conversations and histories came together in a slowly building chronicle of the almost obsessive group of people whose lives have been transformed by the night sky.
Says Devasher: “Where did I position myself within the project, or perhaps where did astronomy position itself within my practice? Beginning in July 2009 through to August 2010, I travelled back and forth across the country with amateur astronomers as part of the process, each trip focused on a stellar event or site.”
The works in the show, Monographed Geographies, Parts Unknown and Surface Tracking are maps of new terrains and fictions. An alternative hybridized world, once familiar and now strange. In his book Metaphor and Cognition: An Interactionist Approach, Bipin Indurkhya makes an interesting distinction between the different ways in which metaphors function. In particular, he describes the functioning of similarity-based metaphors as distinguished from similarity-creating metaphors.
Adds Devasher: “Similarity-based metaphors make comparisons between a source and its target based on some correspondence between both. With similarity-creating metaphors, on the other hand, there is no pre-existing parallel between source and target. They create the similarities between the two. And once this metaphor has been encountered, the connection is almost obvious. The proposition, both geographic and metaphoric, offered by the works in this show is in this direction. These maps will be an attempt to imply the unobservable on the basis of what can be observed.”
Parts Unknown is a suite of seven videos which is a window to a strangely mythic landscape, populated by instruments of both fiction and fact, gazing up and out, transforming our imagination of remote objects as physical places in the imagination. From machines they are transformed into a species of ‘chimera’. They are one thing, standing in for something else, pushing the limits of the known and the imagined. Plotted against the quadrant of space, home to the Pleiades open star cluster, the work offers us seven perspectives of new terrains and fictions, created through the layering of video with drawings and satellite images of the Earth. So slow as to seem still, the frames remain static with just the sunlight moving across the landscape, the clouds moving across the mountains, or the rain drops falling on the screen. Each frame implicates Man, but whether of man’s deeds long past or present is unclear. They take on a mythic, fictional character. We are not quite sure who has placed these cameras here, the small format and the proximity required from the viewer to see the detail lends a quality of footage captured by a planetary rover, the space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of a planet or other astronomical body.
Monographed Geographies are a series of three hybrid print and drawing works that will examine different frames set in astronomical observatories in India. Explains Devasher: “This particular image is set in the high latitude desert of Ladakh at an altitude of 14,500 feet, home to the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) at Hanle, one of the world’s highest sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes. The latter collect gamma rays, one of the most enigmatic and energetic forms of light in the universe, created by celestial events such as supernova explosions, the creation of black holes and the decay of radioactive material in space. Hanle exists today as a
site of pilgrimage for astronomers across India, amateurs and professionals alike, drawn as much by the spectacular skies as by the stark landscape. My interest in these ‘alternative maps’ is to try and create a descriptive map of new terrains and fictions, created through the layering of photographs with satellite images of the other spaces on the Earth, completed by drawing once the image is printed. An alternative hybridized world, once familiar and now strange.”
Surface Tracking is a set of 12 hand drawn maps which are aerial views of one of the most important observatories in India, the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope Array (GMRT) just outside the city of Pune. Of the thirty dishes, fourteen are located more or less randomly in a compact central array in a region of about 1 sq km. The remaining sixteen dishes are spread out along the 3 arms of an approximately Y-shaped configuration over a much larger region. Used by astronomers across the world, research at the facility includes determination of the epoch of galaxy formation in the universe, Pulsar research and the observation of different astronomical objects such as galaxies, supernovae, the sun and solar winds. The watcher becomes the watched. The observer is now the observed.
Related Events : Exhibitions
Entry : Free
Place : KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi - 110017
Area : SaketEvent Description : Khoj International Artists’ Association presents 'Deep Time' a solo show by Delhi-based artist Rohini Devasher.
Deep Time is part of an ongoing project that looks to map common points between astronomy and art practice, through the lens of metaphor.
Rohini Devasher was born in 1978 and lives and works in New Delhi. She received her MA in Printmaking from Winchester School of Art in the UK and her BFA from the College of Art in New Delhi. Her work has been exhibited widely in India and abroad. Two years ago, she began a project that looked at unraveling the hidden world of amateur astronomers in Delhi. Beginning as a form of collective investigation with ‘astro-nomads’ or amateur astronomers in Delhi, stories, conversations and histories came together in a slowly building chronicle of the almost obsessive group of people whose lives have been transformed by the night sky.
Says Devasher: “Where did I position myself within the project, or perhaps where did astronomy position itself within my practice? Beginning in July 2009 through to August 2010, I travelled back and forth across the country with amateur astronomers as part of the process, each trip focused on a stellar event or site.”
The works in the show, Monographed Geographies, Parts Unknown and Surface Tracking are maps of new terrains and fictions. An alternative hybridized world, once familiar and now strange. In his book Metaphor and Cognition: An Interactionist Approach, Bipin Indurkhya makes an interesting distinction between the different ways in which metaphors function. In particular, he describes the functioning of similarity-based metaphors as distinguished from similarity-creating metaphors.
Adds Devasher: “Similarity-based metaphors make comparisons between a source and its target based on some correspondence between both. With similarity-creating metaphors, on the other hand, there is no pre-existing parallel between source and target. They create the similarities between the two. And once this metaphor has been encountered, the connection is almost obvious. The proposition, both geographic and metaphoric, offered by the works in this show is in this direction. These maps will be an attempt to imply the unobservable on the basis of what can be observed.”
Parts Unknown is a suite of seven videos which is a window to a strangely mythic landscape, populated by instruments of both fiction and fact, gazing up and out, transforming our imagination of remote objects as physical places in the imagination. From machines they are transformed into a species of ‘chimera’. They are one thing, standing in for something else, pushing the limits of the known and the imagined. Plotted against the quadrant of space, home to the Pleiades open star cluster, the work offers us seven perspectives of new terrains and fictions, created through the layering of video with drawings and satellite images of the Earth. So slow as to seem still, the frames remain static with just the sunlight moving across the landscape, the clouds moving across the mountains, or the rain drops falling on the screen. Each frame implicates Man, but whether of man’s deeds long past or present is unclear. They take on a mythic, fictional character. We are not quite sure who has placed these cameras here, the small format and the proximity required from the viewer to see the detail lends a quality of footage captured by a planetary rover, the space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of a planet or other astronomical body.
Monographed Geographies are a series of three hybrid print and drawing works that will examine different frames set in astronomical observatories in India. Explains Devasher: “This particular image is set in the high latitude desert of Ladakh at an altitude of 14,500 feet, home to the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) at Hanle, one of the world’s highest sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes. The latter collect gamma rays, one of the most enigmatic and energetic forms of light in the universe, created by celestial events such as supernova explosions, the creation of black holes and the decay of radioactive material in space. Hanle exists today as a
site of pilgrimage for astronomers across India, amateurs and professionals alike, drawn as much by the spectacular skies as by the stark landscape. My interest in these ‘alternative maps’ is to try and create a descriptive map of new terrains and fictions, created through the layering of photographs with satellite images of the other spaces on the Earth, completed by drawing once the image is printed. An alternative hybridized world, once familiar and now strange.”
Surface Tracking is a set of 12 hand drawn maps which are aerial views of one of the most important observatories in India, the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope Array (GMRT) just outside the city of Pune. Of the thirty dishes, fourteen are located more or less randomly in a compact central array in a region of about 1 sq km. The remaining sixteen dishes are spread out along the 3 arms of an approximately Y-shaped configuration over a much larger region. Used by astronomers across the world, research at the facility includes determination of the epoch of galaxy formation in the universe, Pulsar research and the observation of different astronomical objects such as galaxies, supernovae, the sun and solar winds. The watcher becomes the watched. The observer is now the observed.
Related Events : Exhibitions
"Deep Time" Solo Art Show by Rohini Devasher at KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension > 11am-7pm on 4th to 13th October 2013
!["Deep Time" Solo Art Show by Rohini Devasher at KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension > 11am-7pm on 4th to 13th October 2013]()
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Sunday, October 13, 2013
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